


little things

by vi_sobriquet



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: One Shot Collection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-23
Updated: 2019-05-27
Packaged: 2020-03-10 01:53:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18928912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vi_sobriquet/pseuds/vi_sobriquet
Summary: cross-post collection of things i wrote of jack and gabe and maybe other people in overwatch.avoid if you don't want to read a writer trying to find her feet again. warning might change.





	1. Chapter 1

they go home for halloween. 

it’s nothing personal, but switzerland isn’t quite the place to celebrate gabe’s favorite holiday. sure, there’s bound to be a couple people wandering around in costume, some kids eagerly knocking on their neighbors’ doors, and one or two bars decorated for the comfort of tourists – but that’s about it. 

and walking around, there’s something too dependent on its commercial success for gabe to enjoy it. yeah, america’s one to talk – but at least it’s so integrated that there’s more to the night than just the costumes and candy. there’s social gathering and domesticity as communities come together to celebrate living through morbid, wholesome portraits of myths and legends that can never die.

that’s without even talking about heritage.

it’s easy to say that gabe loves october 31st for halloween – that he  _loves_ it at all. he can appreciate the tradition and acknowledge the value others have placed in the night – but given a choice, he’d push consumerism aside. pull custom to the spotlight, hand it a mic, and shower it with the respect it ought to demand. 

because it’s not all pure gratification that drives gabe’s love for the 31st. it can’t be. 

not when his  _papá_ often narrated the tale of how he won the hand of the only woman he ever loved. when his  _tías_ would look across a tombstone under the moon and compare gabe’s eyes to their sister’s. it can’t be, when gabe’s regard for a woman lost too soon, deserves more love than that of a day in a year.

even if jack can’t fully comprehend  _d ****ía_   _de los muertos,_ he can see the altars heaped with  _ofrendas_  and topped with marigolds. he can notice how – even in the dim candlelight, the vibrant flowers light up the night far better than any jack-o-lantern. 

he can heed the increasing frequency of gabe’s silence as it nears the 31st and understand the man’s need for more than just a halloween knock-off in switzerland. 

jack buys the plane tickets to LA on the 25th, finishes packing on the 28th, and on the 30th,

they go home.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> calm before the storm

gabe only knows the nightmares have something to do with saturdays. or to be more precise, the nightmares have to do with sundays at two in the morning, when it’s still saturday in gabe’s head because he can’t sleep before two-thirty. because in the thirty minutes between two and half-past, he has to wrestle jack’s hands away from his own neck.

he doesn’t know why it happens, doesn’t know anything but the way jack’s fingers will draw blood as they claw at his throat if gabe isn’t there to hold him down in time. jack’s always in a cold sweat, the same way that men with guns to their heads do before they’re shot.

but unlike them, jack isn’t going to die because jack isn’t dying because it’s only his body trembling and tears gathering and his breath coming out in a scream.

it’s a terrible way of convincing gabe that nightmares aren’t real enough to kill but he doesn’t have anything else. and although he would rather have anything but fear indicate that jack is here — _jack is breathing, jack is **surviving**_ — he’ll take it. he’ll take it because jack isn’t the only one who’s desperate for everything to be okay.

the last time they spent more than a few hours together in the same bed could have been a year ago. between blackwatch missions he personally oversaw and the global press tours that stole jack away, gabe isn’t sure of exact dates anymore ( _and isn’t that more telling than any marked calendar?_ ) only that it must have been recent. sometime after their professional arguments began to gnaw at his guts but before gabe took up residence in their suite again.

he didn’t think there was anything worse than the first time he found jack screaming in his sleep, scratching at the gauze around his throat, patchy red rings seeping through the white. a week later, he realized that there was worse — having to watch it unfold over again and again.

when asked if jack could remember the nightmares, he would turn milk-white and say he couldn’t. and it wasn’t said in the way that his position as overwatch strike commander taught him to. it wasn’t stiff and professional; it was confused and broken and _oh_ -so-vulnerable. 

gabe spent two decades picking every inch of him apart to know exactly what it would take to get jack morrison to be vulnerable. and that was enough to push him to the docs.

but ziegler had no explanations. neither did o'deorain. they just suggested he monitor the effects and sedate jack when necessary. if the subject wasn’t remembering any of the nightmares, perhaps it was a merely curious example of sleepwalking brought about by stress.

eventually, ziegler had encouraged him to ride it out. gabe remembered the words sounded less like clinical advice and more like couples counseling.

gabe won’t pretend to believe his arguments with jack have gone unnoticed. he’s certain they won’t get any better either. not when shadows still exist in the light and there are things that aren’t adding up in overwatch’s books. maybe between the two of them, they could never be liars but gabe knows they both have their own secrets to keep. 

maybe they’re both seeing things — he in the real world, and jack in his head — but if he is, at least he has methods for dealing with his problems.

jack, on the other hand, has none. 

whatever reasons the u.n. had in promoting jack all those years ago, gabe wonders now if they considered his mental health. if they took a long look between the both of them and pointed at jack, thinking _that one looks like he’ll last longer. he won’t prematurely blow his brains out_. did they point at gabe with those same thoughts in mind? was it the reverse?

the only answer he has to all of that is that they were wrong. that five letter word is all that comes to his mind whenever his shaky fingers get trigger happy in a fight. it runs through his veins while listening to ana enlighten jesse on the importance of aiming at vital organs. when watching fareeha in the shooting range and wondering if she’ll be her mother one day. 

adawe, jack, gabe — they were all wrong to believe that overwatch could sustain itself into a happy ending when there was all this mess to deal with. or was that what the u.n. always wanted anyway?

when the clock reads two, and jack’s hands are grabbing at things that aren’t there, _wrong_ blares like a klaxon.

gabe leaps across the room. grips each of jack’s hands in his own, maneuvers the man onto his side, and hugs him tightly from behind. he keeps their arms crossed, two pairs of clasped hands held tight against opposite shoulders like they’re spooning in a grave. all of this while jack sobs and begs and struggles somewhere beyond his reach.

gabe can still the shakes but he can’t do anything for the screams. he’s done this half a dozen times, might have missed a dozen more. the foresight never stops his heart from sinking but he’s mastered a routine that gets him through thirty minutes of his heart breaking over and over.

each time jack’s voice catches on a cry, gabe whispers a soft _cariño_ in response. if some nosy idiot asked, he might have half a mind to knock any further questions from their imagination. he might admit calling jack sweet nothings was a habit he wasn’t ready to break. he might not say anything at all, keep his cards close and hearts far. let the damning endearment speak for itself.

 _cariño_ , he’ll call, hoping to lure jack back to him like eurydice out of hades. under jack’s ear as he presses love that’s not yet lost into the curve where jack’s jaw begins and ends. love, to heal the self-destruction in hours of foggy madness — although, the one who needs its reminders will not remember the love when he wakes up alone.

 _cariño_ , he’ll murmur, gentle as a prayer and as longing as a plea. as the minutes pass and jack winds down, gabe hopes he hears the epithet when his arms are around him. hopes he’ll feel it when they aren’t, in spite of everything they haven’t been to each other in years. 

_cariño_ , he’ll dream while in the future, someone dressed in black and white and blood wraps talons around a masked man’s neck and wrings his every last breath away.


End file.
